Reducing Your Daily BPA Exposure

Recently quite a lot of folks have shown an interest in reducing the stress they put on their bodies from known or potential toxins from various sources in their environment. For many of them eliminating bisphenol A, also known as BPA, has become one part of the toxic load reduction.

BPA is a type of monomer used in producing many products -particularly things like plastic bottles and other household goods. Some product manufacturers have responded to consumer desires by producing BPA free water bottles and other products designed to reduce or eliminate daily exposure to this potentially harmful compound. We say potentially harmful because bisphenol A seems to have a disruptive effect on your endocrine system and damages healthy hormonal signalling. It may also do damage to thyroid receptors and cause problems with the proper functioning of your thyroid. Obviously this is not a good thing for your health.

As we mentioned one of the first places to begin reducing your contact with bisphenol A is to use food and drink containers that are BPA free. There are some BPA free plastic products and with many items you also have the option to go with a metal product such as a stainless steel canteen instead of a plastic water bottle.

If you are concerned about the BPA coating used on the interior of many cans used for canned foods you can try to get most of your preserved foods in glass containers or do even better and use fresh produce exclusively.

If you do choose to try and reduce your bisphenol A exposure as much as possible remember that while it is a big problem and certainly something to avoid there are other potential toxins both in the packaging of our food and household goods and in the food itself that we may need to be more concerned about. In fact some of the most commonly eaten food items in the U.S. are actually quite harmful to your health and potentially more dangerous since they are intentionally ingested rather than incidentally or by accident as in the case of BPA.

By way of example: excessive ingestion of fructose is quite damaging to your health whether it is ingested in the form of high fructose corn syrup or regular sucrose. You will find a large number of soy components in many packaged foods as well and soy has a number of detrimental health effects you may want to look into. Of course this isn't to say you shouldn't be concerned about BPA at all just that there are some more thoroughly studied food toxins like those found in processed corn, wheat and soy products whose removal from your diet can often yield surprising health benefits.